Marquette Warrior

We are here to provide an independent, rather skeptical view of events at Marquette University. Comments are enabled on most posts, but extended comments are welcome and can be e-mailed to jmcadams2@juno.com. E-mailed comments will be treated like Letters to the Editor.
This site has no official connection with Marquette University. Indeed, when University officials find out about it, they will doubtless want it shut down.

Thursday, July 30, 2015

Outlaw the Redskins Name? Just the Beginning

From an anonymous e-mail. We don’t know who first wrote this, but it’s all over the ‘net. It was written in response to an oh-so-politically correct column by Clarence Page.

Dear Mr. Page:

I agree with our Native American population. I am highly insulted by the racially charged name of
the Washington Redskins. One might argue that to name a professional football team after Native Americans would exalt them as fine warriors, but nay, nay. We must be careful not to offend, and in the spirit of political correctness and courtesy, we must move forward. Let’s also ditch the Kansas City Chiefs, the Atlanta Braves and the Cleveland Indians.

If your shorts are in a wad because of the reference the name Redskins makes to skin color, then we need to get rid of the Cleveland Browns. The Carolina Panthers obviously were named to keep the memory of militant Blacks from the 60’s alive. Gone. It’s offensive to us white folk.

The New York Yankees offend the Southern population. Do you see a team named for the Confederacy? No! There is no room for any reference to that tragic war that cost this country so many young men’s lives.

I am also offended by the blatant references to the Catholic religion among our sports team
names. Totally inappropriate to have the New Orleans Saints, the Los Angeles Angels or the San Diego Padres.

Then, there are the team names that glorify criminals who raped and pillaged. We are talking about
the horrible Oakland Raiders, the Minnesota Vikings, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Pittsburgh Pirates!

Now, let us address those teams that clearly send the wrong message to our children. The San Diego Chargers promote irresponsible fighting or even spending habits. Wrong message to our children.

The New York Giants and the San Francisco Giants promote obesity, a growing childhood epidemic. Wrong message to our children. The Cincinnati Reds promote downers/barbiturates. Wrong message to our children.

The Milwaukee Brewers. Well that goes without saying. Wrong message to our children.

So, there you go. We need to support any legislation that comes out to rectify this travesty, because the government will likely become involved with this issue, as they should. Just the kind of thing the do-nothing Congress loves.

As a die hard Oregon State fan, my wife and I, with all of this in mind, suggest it might also make some sense to change the name of the Oregon State women’s athletic teams to something other than “the Beavers” (especially when they play Southern California) . Do we really want the Trojans sticking it to the Beavers???

I always love your articles and I generally agree with them.

As for the Redskins name I would suggest they change the name to the Do Nothings to better represent their community, paying tribute to the idiots in Congress.

Once one starts looking for grievances, the possibilities never end. The U.S. Army, for examples, has attack helicopters named Sioux, Iroquois, Apache, Black Hawk, Kiowa, Comanche, Cayuse and Cheyenne.

Global Warming/Climate Change: Extended Discussion

Interestingly, proponents of man-made global warming refused to appear on the show, leaving Rosenberg to play the role of devil’s advocate. This, Rosenberg explains, is almost invariably the case as warming advocates imperiously insist that warming is “settled science” about which there is no legitimate doubt.

But public opinion polls shot there most certainly is doubt among the citizenry.

So if their case is so strong, why won’t the advocates avail themselves of the opportunity to convince doubters with their (supposedly) superior arguments? It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the issue is way more complex than the warmists want the public knowing, and that they fear they would be on the defensive.

Instinctively, we should distrust people who refuse to argue their case. Their refusal implies that they live in a little bubble where everybody shares their assumptions, and they fear stepping out into the world where their assumptions will be challenged.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Left Wing “Netroots” Really Hate Walker

PHOENIX, Ariz. — There’s no love lost for any of the 2016 Republican presidential contenders at the 2015 Netroots Nation confab, but attendees reserve a special kind of loathing for one candidate in particular: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

It’s an understandable sentiment given the setting. This year’s edition of the annual convention of liberal activists is heavily focused on bread-and-butter economic issues, with a strong union presence. The AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association have booths set up near the center of the convention hall, and many of the other booths are focused on one economic topic or another. Two large American flags with rainbow stripes instead of alternating red and white hang from the LGBT Netroots Connect booth, an indication of how forcefully gay rights are defended here.

All of which makes this a very hostile crowd for Walker, who regularly trumpets his victories over public-sector unions in his home state, and now weaves his opposition to the Supreme Court’s recent same-sex marriage decision into his stump speech as well.

“Scott Walker is probably the most dangerous of the Republicans in my opinion. And that’s just my opinion,” Dan O’Neal, the Arizona state coordinator for the Progressive Democrats of America, said. “He and Bush are probably the two most dangerous in terms of competing with Bernie or Hillary.”

It’s not that there are any warm and fuzzy feelings toward the rest of the GOP field, but it’s Walker who stirs the most negative passions among liberal activists.

“I mean, if you look at the records, Scott Walker has destroyed the economy and it’s been devastating for workers there,” Stephanie Taylor, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said on Thursday as she sat in a conference room alongside Adam Green, the other founder of the liberal political action committee. “I would hate to see that happen to America.”

Green quickly interjected, saying Walker and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are the least appealing of the bunch. “But that’s not to say we could live with the other ones,” he added.

This year, Netroots attendees sporting pro-Bernie Sanders buttons are everywhere (on Thursday, it was hard to find a Hillary Clinton logo), and none of them had positive things to say about Walker.

And just as Sanders, with his unabashedly pro-labor views, fires up his left-leaning supporters, Walker’s union-busting boasts send them into paroxysms of rage.

“To me he looks like a little twerp,” said Fred Koegel, a retired member of the Iron Workers of Chicago Local 11 union. “He looks like the kid that hired the bullies in the schoolyard to protect him. That’s him, OK?”

This kind of raw hatred on the part of the left has, in fact, proven to be a huge political asset for Walker.

It is a truism among political scientists that people with intense preferences matter more in politics than people with bland opinions. But it doesn’t work that way when extremists are conspicuously deranged. The leftists’ tantrums in Wisconsin didn’t seem to hurt Walker. Ordinary voters are likely to sympathize with the targets of the extremists. This is especially true when the target of the extremists is rather mild-mannered and earnest. (Between left extremists and Donald Trump, the issue is more complex.)

Most certainly, nobody in the Walker campaign is crying in their beer over news like this.

Monday, July 13, 2015

ABC in 2009: Global Warming Disaster by 2015

This from the Media Research Center. Of course, the fact that the media has puffed absurd scenarios doesn’t mean there is no man-made global warming. But numerous examples like this mean you can’t trust what the media tell you about the issue. Following is a part of the transcript of the segment from Good Morning America.

GMA
6/12/08
8:34am

CHRIS CUOMO: Now, we will have a dramatic preview for you of an unprecedented ABC News event called “Earth 2100.” We’re asking you to help create a story that is yet to unfold: What our world will look like in 100 years if we don’t save our troubled planet. Your reports will actually help form the backbone of a two-hour special airing this fall. ABC’s Bob Woodruff will be the host. He joins us now. Pleasure, Bob.

BOB WOODRUFF: You too, Chris. You know, this show is a countdown through the next century and shows what scientists say might very well happen if we do not change our current path. As part of the show, today, we are launching an interactive web game which puts participants in the future and asks them to report back about what it is like to live in this future world. The first stop is the year 2015.

[NOTE: ABC provides no graphics or identification for any of the following individuals/activists featured. Identifications taken discerned from web article.]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE #1: The public is sleepwalking into the future. You know, sort of going through the motions of daily life and really not paying attention.

JAMES HANSEN (NASA/AL GORE SCIENCE ADVISOR): We can see what the prospects are and we can see that we could solve the problem but we’re not doing it.

JOHN HOLDREN (PROFESSOR/HARVARD UNIVERSITY): We’re going to see more floods, more droughts, more wildfires.

UNIDENTIFIED “REPORTER:” Flames cover hundreds of square miles.

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: We expect more intense hurricanes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE #5: Well, how warm is it going to get? How much will sea level rise? We don’t know really know where the end is.

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE #2: Temperatures have hit dangerous levels.

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE #3: Agriculture production is dropping because temperatures are
rising.

HEIDI CULLEN (WEATHER CHANNEL/CLIMATE CHANGE EXPERT): There’s about one billion people who are malnourished. That number just continually grows.

...

CUOMO: I think we’re familiar with some of these issues, but, boy, 2015? That’s seven years from now. Could it really be that bad?

WOODRUFF: It’s very soon, you know. But all you have to do is look at the world today right today. You know, you’ve got gas prices going up. You got food prices going up. You’ve got extreme weather. The scientists have studied this for decades. They say if you connect the dots, you can actually see that we’re approaching maybe even a perfect storm. Or you have got shrinking resources, population growth. Climate change. So, the idea now is to look at it, wake up about it and then try to do something to fix it.

...

WOODRUFF: But the best of these regular reports that come from people that are watching, we’re going to put those on, all of this on our two-hour production that’s going to happen in the fall. And we just want more of these people to watch. And we’ve gotten already some remarkable interviews from these people. And just take a quick look.

UNIDENTIFIED TEENAGER: It’s June 8th, 2015. One carton of milk is $12.99.

SECOND UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gas reached over $9 a gallon.

THIRD UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I’m scared [bleeped] right now, but I have to get this out.

WOODRUFF: So the producers actually work with those people that send in their ideas into the website. And then we’re just hoping that the goal is ultimately get these ideas very soon.

CUOMO: Lovely. Bob Woodruff. Thank you very much. You can find out much more about how you can be part of this exciting and important show. You can go to Earth2100.tv. Earth2100.tv or you can go to ABCNews.com.

Being the Mainstream Media, of course, means never having to say “we are sorry we lied to you.”

Going International: Marquette Makes Jerusalem Post

Not by accident is the most leftist dominated segment of American life also that in which free speech is least protected. Kirsten Powers (a Democrat) has written a new book called The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech. Much of that book is devoted to American universities where left-wing students, administrators and faculty have sent the message that “anyone [who] strays off the leftist script... might find themselves investigated, harassed, ostracized, even expelled” because their speech has given offense.

Nearly 60% of the colleges and universities in America have campus speech codes that dramatically restrict, if not obliterate, freedom of speech. One, for instance, bars students from “offending... a member of the university community.”

Fordham University prohibits using email to “insult.” Offense and insult are determined by the ones so offended. Numerous universities have instituted “trigger warnings” on course content to warn students that course material may cause them distress by challenging their worldview.

Janet Napolitano, chancellor of the University of California system, the nation’s largest, recently instituted seminars for deans and department chairs to guide them in things that should no longer be said because they constitute “micro-aggressions,” defined as “brief, subtle verbal or non-verbal exchanges that send denigrating message to the recipient because of his or her group membership.”

Included are such statements as “America is a land of opportunity”; “I believe that the most qualified person should get the job”; “America is a melting-pot” and “affirmative action is racist.”

Each of these “suggestions” seeks to impose a particular societal vision and/or foreclose societal debate. They constitute a liberal version of the Gulag’s reeducation centers. Objections to the first two statements are based on a desire to portray America as so racist that individual talent and hard work are virtually irrelevant and it is impossible to speak of a hirings based on merit. “America is a melting-pot” is objectionable, because it prefers the traditional view of America as an affirmational society bound together by certain common ideas over the multicultural vision of a balkanized society based on ethnic, racial and sexual identities. The view that non-colorblind admissions and hiring is inherently racist is one side of a long-standing debate, and it just happens to be the view adopted by the US Supreme Court of late.

A group of Scholars of Color recently disrupted a class at UCLA, charging that the tenured professor had committed “micro-aggressions” against them. Example: The professor changed one student’s capitalization of “indigenous” to lower case, and thus disrespected her ideological point of view. Were the students punished for disrupting a class? No. The 79-year-old professor was instructed to stay off the graduate campus for a year, and UCLA commissioned an “Independent Investigative Report on Acts of Bias and Discrimination Involving Faculty.”

At Marquette University, a Jesuit school, Prof. John McAdams was stripped of tenure and fired for a blog post, in which he criticized by name a graduate teaching assistant who had told a student that he could not defend the traditional Catholic teaching on same-gender marriage in class because it might offend other students.

McAdams wrote that the graduate student had used “a tactic typical among liberals now.

Opinions with which they disagree are not merely wrong and are not to be argued against on their merits, but are deemed ‘offensive’ and need to be shut up.”

His firing proved how right he was and how effective those tactics have proven.

Of course, part and parcel of this intolerant leftism is hostility toward Israel.

Not all offense is equal. Jewish students live in a hostile environment, which can at times be genuinely frightening, on many campuses across America. Last summer, Boston police had to protect pro-Israel students over three successive days from pro-Palestinian mobs shouting “Jews back to Birkenau.” Over 50% of Jewish students report that they have personally experienced or witnessed anti-Semitism.

No one, it seems, is particularly concerned about aggressions – micro or otherwise – against them, even though Jew hatred is not exactly an unknown phenomenon throughout history.

On about 200 campuses, there are annual Israel Apartheid Week rallies calling for the destruction of the State of Israel. Many of the events are formally sponsored by academic departments and promoted by professors on their emails.

Ruth Wisse, in “Anti-Semitism Goes to School” (in the May Mosaic) describes how a group of pro-Palestinian student groups demanded that candidates for student government at UCLA and Berkeley sign a pledge that they will not participate in trips to Israel organized by groups like AIPAC or Aish International’s Hasbara Fellowships. Most candidates refused to sign, but the student government president did.

While expressing discomfort with the pledge, UCLA’s Jewish chancellor declined to go further on the grounds that promotion of the pledge is a form of free speech. When it comes to leftists, minorities and those otherwise easily offended, the subjective hurt of those offended trumps free speech; when it comes to insult and intimidation of Jewish students, however, the value of campus free inquiry and speech is suddenly rediscovered.

As Wisse puts it, “Institutions that enforce ‘sensitivity training’ to ensure toleration for gays, blacks and other minorities may inadvertently be bringing some of these groups together in common hostility to Jews as the only campus minority against whom hostility is condoned.”

Jews, for a few decades after the Holocaust, had the status of a politically correct victim group, toward whom liberals were sympathetic. But that era is gone.

Why is this? First, because Israel is an ally of the United States, and liberals and leftists, not liking America, instinctively dislike America’s allies also.

Secondly, liberals and leftists pride themselves on being champions of the world’s victims. Jews, and the state of Israel, have not played the part of victim. Jews have succeeded splendidly in American society, and Israel has not only prospered as a free society, it has decisively beaten off Arab attacks. Not the sort of place that can be portrayed as victimized.

Thus we have the (happily) unsuccessful attempt on the Marquette campus to divest from companies doing business with Israel. Some flavor of this campaign can by seen in the Twitter feed of Students for Justice in Palestine.

Friday, July 10, 2015

Bogus Racial Incidents on College Campuses

There have been a lot of bogus “racist” incidents on college campuses, incidents staged by leftists and members of minority groups, aimed at promoting a “diversity” agenda by making people believe that the modern college campus is just crawling with racists. And thus there needs to be a full court press to indoctrinate the entire student body into the shibboleths of political correctness.

White Gangs at Columbia University — 1987

In March 1987, eight months before Tawana Brawley became a household name, black students at Columbia University made the rather incredible charge that mobs of white students were beating up black students on campus. About a dozen blacks claimed to have seen or been victims of these racist attacks.

In the 1980s, American colleges were sturdy sentinels against the merest hint of a racist thought. There were seminars on racism, posters against racism, bake sales against racism, racism “awareness” days, articles denouncing racism, consciousness-raising sessions about racism. More resources were devoted to studying racism than studying history, chemistry or math. It would be hard to find a single person on an American college campus, at least post-1980, who would have one good thing to say about racism.

Moreover, the alleged perpetrators of these racist beatings at Columbia weren’t teenaged toughs with criminal records in a working-class neighborhood: They were college students at an Ivy League school.

But blacks claimed that whites were so terrorizing them that they were afraid to walk alone on campus. According to their spokeswoman, Barnard student Cheryl Derricotte, it was “open season on black people.”

The usual nonsense ensued. There were sit-ins, administration building take-overs, and noisy rallies outside the fraternity house said to harbor the white racist thugs. Fifty people were arrested as a result of the anti-racism protests. Most of them were white. Twenty-three Columbia students staged a sit-in at 1 Police Plaza in lower Manhattan to demand the arrest of the white students they claimed were beating up blacks on campus.

Black students formed a group to protect themselves from the marauding white mobs and — in what was always a good sign — hired C. Vernon Mason as their lawyer. “The message has gotten out,” Mason said, —“that black students are not safe on the Columbia campus and someone is going to have to answer for this.”

Newsweek quoted Frank L. Matthews, publisher of Black Issues in Higher Education, saying that he blamed the surge of college racism on white students’ “reading the messages” from the Reagan administration. Of course, another theory is that it was black students “reading the messages” from a media that gave full-court press to even simulated racist incidents and refused to hold black people accountable for false reports.

If you are not a journalist, it will come as no surprise that, after painstaking investigations by both the police and the very politically correct university, the whole thing turned out to be a hoax. According to dozens of eyewitnesses, it was black students who had started a fight with white students late one night after a dance, and then made up the cock-and-bull story about roving white gangs targeting blacks.

None of the newspapers and magazines that had reported the original story about white racists stampeding through an Ivy League campus ever got around to mentioning that it was a lie—not the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Newsweek or Time magazine. Careful readers had to wait for this admission in the Christian Science Monitor about a year later:

[T]he the university report on the incident, which relied on the signed statements of 22 eyewitnesses ...differed substantially from the account given by the blacks and used by the news media in reporting the story. [I]n the Columbia account, the actual brawl was provoked by a group of five to seven blacks outside the hangout. [T]heir story of “a white lynch mob” has since been discredited.

No charges were brought by the university or the police against the students for filing a false police complaint.

The national news coverage of a story about Ivy Leaguers as latter-day Bull Connors triggered dozens more of these incidents at campuses around the country. These were all hoaxes, too. But no matter how absurd the idea of marauding white students attacking blacks on college campuses, the false charges kept coming and liberals kept believing them.

Sabrina Collins, Emory University

A few years later, in 1990, Sabrina Collins, a black premed student at Emory College, claimed to have been the victim of a campaign of racial ha­rassment — “die, [N-word], die” had been painted on her floor, bleach poured on her clothes and typed death threats slipped under her door. Even her stuffed animals had been mutilated. As a result of these incidents, Collins fell mute and had to be hospitalized.

Hundreds of students held a rally to protest racism as a result of what had happened to Collins. One student, Leonard Scriven, denounced what he called the “pervasive system of racism” at Emory. At a meeting of students and faculty about the incident, a newly formed black student group, Students Against Racial Inequality, submitted a list of demands, including more black students and faculty members, two new centers for the study of African American culture . . .and the firing of the director of public safety, Edward A. Medlin.

The public safety office had already responded to Collins’s allegations by equipping her dorm room with additional locks, a portable motion detector and an alarm system. Safety officers patrolled her hallway as well as the area outside her dormitory building. The office of public safety had called in local, state and federal investigators. But the students against racial inequality wanted this poor guy’s head.

After a thorough inquiry, the Georgia. Bureau of Investigation concluded that Collins had perpetrated the racist acts on herself. Her fingerprints were the only ones on the letters and were arranged on the page in a pattern indicating that she had put the letter in a typewriter; the letters had been composed on a typewriter in the library she frequented; and, finally, the letters also spelled “you’re” as “your” — as was Sabrina’s habit. The incidents had begun just as Collins was being investigated for an honor code violation for cheating in a chemistry class.

No charges were pressed against Collins. The story vanished. Let’s just hope the head of public safety was allowed to keep his job.

Gilbert Moore, Jr., Williams College — 1993

Fake racist incidents on college campuses became as common as Madonna’s music. Against a background of daily lectures against racism, some racist letter or graffiti would materialize, there would be a generalized gnashing of teeth about the pervasiveness of racism and then the perpetrator would always turn out to be a black student.

At Williams College in 1993, hideous racist messages were found on the door of the Black Student Union. An uproar ensued. Two days later, Dean Joan Edwards announced to general relief that the culprit had admitted responsibility and was being punished — but neglected to mention that the student was black until two weeks later, as the rumor mill went wild.

Junior Gilbert Moore Jr. said he had put up the racist notes as a response to actual racism at Williams — of which there was no evidence or he wouldn’t have needed to fake it — and to encourage more dialogue about racism, because twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week was not enough. The college rose to the challenge — by suspending him for one semester. Enraged that a black student would be held responsible for anything he did, some black students denounced the harsh penalty, threatening to leave Williams. Moore concluded: “The system . . . has failed me.”

Alicia Hardin, Trinity International University — 2005

Federal investigators must have been getting bored with the hoax hate crimes on college campuses they kept being asked to investigate. After OJ, even the media’s hysteria was muted. Nonetheless, when three students at Trinity International University, a small Christian college near Chicago, received threatening racist letters in 2005, scores of newspapers across the country ran with the news.

A New York Times article on the alleged hate crime was bristling with references to the Christian nature of the school: “Christian College Secludes Students after Hate Letters ...a small Evangelical Christian college ...a conservative Bible-based school .. more than 20 students held hands in a circle to pray . . . Affiliated with the Evangelical Free Church of America, the university mission statement says that its education is based on ‘the authority of God’s inerrant word, Holy Scripture,’ and that it seeks an international identity with ‘people drawn from every tribe and tongue.’”

As is required by law, Jesse Jackson met with the victims of the letters, reporting that they “feel like a target is on their back because they are black.” Charlie Dates, a black student getting his masters in divinity, did not sound especially worried. He told the Times, “Crazy people do crazy things. It’s nothing to be terrified over.”

There was big coverage for the initial allegation. You would not read in the New York Times, however, that the perpetrator turned out to be a black student, Alicia Hardin. She had staged the racist incident because she “wanted to switch schools.” But as soon as she confessed, the Times lost interest in the story.

So did most of the newspapers from around the country that had given banner coverage to the original story. Only a handful bothered informing their readers about the investigation’s results. When the hoax part of the story was reported at all, it usually showed up in demure, hundred-word items buried deep inside the newspaper.

Instead of bemoaning the runaway popularity of Fox News, the liberal media might consider cutting into Fox’s popularity by not aggressively
hiding the news.

None of the racist incidents sweeping college campuses ever turned out to be true. They were either the normal bumps and jostles that come with being a human being — or, more often, they were complete frauds perpetrated by wannabe victims.

Here at Marquette

The evidence for Marquette’s racist climate is manifold: explicitly racist comments such as “black lives don’t matter” on the social media site YikYak; racist graffiti in the campus library; daily microaggressions and more.

Somebody needs to produce the offensive Tweets from Yik Yak; at the moment we don’t see anything objectionable. Of course, the comment could have been removed. If there was such a comment, it could have been a hoax, or indeed could have been a lament about the low value put on black lives.

Likewise, we would like to see the “racist graffiti.” In this era when everybody has a smart phone, there must be an image, right? And is it a hoax too? Even if some racist did it, he’s not likely to repent and see the error of his ways due to some Stalinist reeducation.

The simple fact, of which anybody who knows Marquette students is fully aware, is that they are not racist. Do they sometimes hold opinions that campus leftists don’t like? Opposing affirmative action, for example? Or believing that the biggest problem blacks have is not white racism but the small number of black children who have a dad? Most certainly. And they have every right to believe those things.

Thursday, July 02, 2015

Bogus Narrative on Black Churches Burning

America is still reeling from the horrific Charleston, S.C., massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church that claimed the lives of nine innocent people.

The last thing the community and our country need are hysterical journalists compounding the pain with inflammatory reporting on an unsubstantiated “epidemic” of black church arsons.

On Monday, a Baltimore Sun lead editorial decried “a series of mysterious fires at African-American churches across the South” in the wake of the Charleston murders. The newspaper cited a “pattern” of attacks, including what it claimed was an “uptick in attacks on 37 black churches in the South” in the 1990s that “prompted President Bill Clinton to set up a church-arson investigative task force.”

The Sun neglected to mention that Clinton had falsely claimed at the time that he had “vivid and painful memories of black churches being burned in my own state when I was a child” — an assertion immediately debunked by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The Sun also neglected to mention that the manufactured media coverage that launched the 1990s black church arson juggernaut, fueled by former USA Today reporter Gary Fields’ 61 fear-mongering stories, fell apart under scrutiny. Fields’ own employer was forced to admit that “analysis of the 64 fires since 1995 shows only four can be conclusively shown to be racially motivated.”

Reminder: Several of the hyped hate crimes against black churches had been committed by black suspects; a significant number of the black churches were, in fact, white churches; and the complex motives behind the crimes included mental illness, vandalism and concealment of theft.

Once again, falsified history is repeating itself.

The NAACP, which capitalized on the Clinton-era race hustle, is now pushing the new arson epidemic narrative. The organization remains shamelessly undaunted after fueling the fake NAACP “bombing” in Colorado Springs earlier this year. The group’s CEO, Cornell Brooks, tweeted the incendiary “#WhoIsBurningBlackChurches” hashtag on Tuesday and disclosed that he is “informing churches, reviewing legislation, pushing media awareness and deciding legal options.”

The left-wing instigators at the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose stated mission is to “destroy” its political opponents and whose target map and list of social conservative groups were used by left-wing domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins to shoot up the Washington, D.C., office of the Family Research Council in 2012, baselessly reported: “In what may not be a coincidence, a string of nighttime fires have damaged or destroyed at least six predominately black churches in four southern states in the past week.”

Teach for America alumnus agitator DeRay McKesson quickly added his Twitter kerosene to the fire, reflexively claiming that the “KKK” was responsible for a half-dozen black church burnings.

Buried beneath the sensationalized social media avalanche of panic: the more judicious and careful observations of Los Angeles Times reporter Matt Pearce that the feds have made no official determinations that any hate crimes have taken place and that “it’s unclear whether any of the fires are linked.”

It was observed that “one of the half-dozen church crimes was most likely accidental” and had “no element of criminal intent.”

Another “was likely touched off by an electrical short” after a tree limb fell on the property, yanking the electrical service line with it.

And yet another alleged “black church arson” actually involved a white church “struck by lightning.”

The New York Daily News blared: “String of apparent arson fires plague black churches in Carolinas, Georgia and Tennessee.”

Mic.com quoted a hate crimes “expert” blaming — you guessed it — “the growth of violent right-wing extremist ideology in the U.S.” for the nonexistent black church arson epidemic.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

In this case, it’s coming from the five-alarm self-immolation of agenda-driven journalism’s credibility.

That mainstream media types, with their liberal biases, would be suckers for the Standard Racial Narrative — black people as beaten down victims of white racism — is no surprise.

What is stunning is their absurd inability to notice that this narrative has imploded time after time. It did with the “black church burnings” of the 1990s. It did with the Duke Lacrosse case. It did with the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case. It did in Ferguson, Missouri. It did in Baltimore (where three of the six charged officers are black).

Are they stupid? No, they are just immersed in a culture virulently committed to the Standard Racial Narrative. As True Believers, they are staunchly resistant to any reconsideration of the narrative. They might concede this or that case — albeit reluctantly when the evidence becomes undeniable. But the next time a chance to apply the narrative comes along, they revert to the standard credulity.

Update

Some coverage has taken the time to point out that about 1600 churches in the U.S. suffer fires every year, 16 percent of them due to arson, which means on average at least five churches suffer arson every week. There are believed to be about 340,000 religious congregations in the U.S., and about 20 percent are believed to be black, although about 40 percent in the South are thought to be predominantly black.

Much of the recent coverage has cited the black church arson story of the 1990s, when there was a reputed upsurge in burnings. Few articles back then noted that church arsons averaged about 500-600 annually, according to the insurance industry, and that if 20 percent were black there would be on average about 100-120 burned black churches, which no study ever found to be the case.